I thought gnome 3.4 was alright, but gnome 3.6 is terribly buggy. It introduced a huge memory leak (every interaction with the top panel leaks memory and memory usage never goes down), the new lock screen is really buggy and also ignores the "lock screen after" setting in GCC. GDM 3.6 is also really buggy, every single distro I've used with GDM 3.6 (fedora, ubuntu, arch) I've experienced issues where it randomly decides to hang on logout so you have to go into another tty and restart gdm, and its just slow in general.

I recently tried Gnome 3.6. Here are some thoughts:The "Applications" section has been moved to the end of the app dock - WUT? It's a stupid decision from the Gnome team. Also, the system tray is unacceptable, it's too big, and when I right-click an icon (fcitx), the menu appears for a moment then disappears because it loses focus. But Gnome runs very smoothly on my laptop which has Core 2 Duo and 4 GB of RAM. It feels much more responsive than Cinnamon. Quite impressive - I have to say.The Gnome applications seems to be simpler and simpler. Nautilus is a big disappointment with many features removed. I'm used to the "search as you type" feature, so the new Nautilus is a no-go for me. System Settings also got some tweaks. The background chooser is ridiculous - showing just a big thumbnail at first, and not allowing you to choose custom colors. The Mouse section is nice, but iBus integration forced me to use another tool - this time fcitx. Users Accounts now won't let you choose "weak" passwords (containing dictionary words) anymore. So annoying.As for GDM, I hate it. Whenever there's a shell crash on Cinnamon, the screen goes black and shows "Oops! Something has gone wrong", and GDM only allows me to log out. User-friendly it is, but not so friendly to me. I still have to use GDM because I don't want to use KDM, Slim doesn't seem to work, and installing LightDM on Arch is a mess to a newbie like me.I still keep Gnome 3 alongside Cinnamon and use it as a backup DE when Cinnamon crashes. Cinnamon is the best

I've tried GS 3.6 and I think aesthetically it's very nice looking but I neither like the super-sized icons or the window previews. It may be an okay desktop for a keyboard user but I primarily use my mouse to navigate and nothing makes navigating fast than a traditional menu and task switcher like Cinnamon. Trying to find my app or window in the overview filled with obese icons is tiring and frustrating for me and gives me a migraine. No thanks! Cinnamon is better.

The only thing about it I liked was the integrated messaging and notification system.

I have tried both Unity and Gnome3 and find both to be beautiful to look at but less than optimum for a desktop or laptop. It seems clear that both Gnome and Canonical are using the desktop to work out their tablet UI's.This is a terrible mistake and ironically Microsoft is doing the same thing, attempting to make a touch based UI and then forcing it onto the desktop. I could write a long, long rant about all the bad things Apple does but one thing they understand correctly is that a touch UI and a KB/mouse driven UI require completely different user interfaces.That seems blindingly obvious to me.

InkKnife wrote:I have tried both Unity and Gnome3 and find both to be beautiful to look at but less than optimum for a desktop or laptop. It seems clear that both Gnome and Canonical are using the desktop to work out their tablet UI's.This is a terrible mistake and ironically Microsoft is doing the same thing, attempting to make a touch based UI and then forcing it onto the desktop. I could write a long, long rant about all the bad things Apple does but one thing they understand correctly is that a touch UI and a KB/mouse driven UI require completely different user interfaces.That seems blindingly obvious to me.

Haven't tried Windows 8's interface -- I've only played around with it a couple times in stores -- but I like using Unity and GNOME Shell on my desktop pc. A lot of people think that those interfaces are no good for the desktop, but a lot of other people see things differently.

InkKnife wrote:I have tried both Unity and Gnome3 and find both to be beautiful to look at but less than optimum for a desktop or laptop. It seems clear that both Gnome and Canonical are using the desktop to work out their tablet UI's.This is a terrible mistake and ironically Microsoft is doing the same thing, attempting to make a touch based UI and then forcing it onto the desktop. I could write a long, long rant about all the bad things Apple does but one thing they understand correctly is that a touch UI and a KB/mouse driven UI require completely different user interfaces.That seems blindingly obvious to me.

Haven't tried Windows 8's interface -- I've only played around with it a couple times in stores -- but I like using Unity and GNOME Shell on my desktop pc. A lot of people think that those interfaces are no good for the desktop, but a lot of other people see things differently.

Ya, that's fine. One of the luxuries of using Linux is that there are so many choices. Unity and Gnome# are not for me but someone has to make stuff for people who don't like what I do. Sometimes I accidentally go into debate mode and write more adamantly than I intend.

I've tried it repeatedly, trying to find something to like about it. It just isn't happening for me. Is it just me, or does everything seem fuzzy, low-res, and chunky in Gnome 3 Shell? Everything is so dumbed-down, and things take too may steps to do. I was a big fan of Gnome 2, but I just can't grok with Gnome 3. For that matter, Cinnamon is starting to irritate me as well. I'm moving everything to Xfce, which is already the default for my Debian and Slackware boxes. Much faster and less resource-hungry than anything Gnome, Cinnamon, or Unity related, and KDE, for that matter.

I'm running Gnome 3 on Maya Cinnamon with Axe Menu installed. I think this might be the best Desktop experience I have ever had (and I've been using PC's since DOS 3). I love it so much I gave a donation. Pity Mate wont install on my PC (an old-ish Fujitsu Siemens Desktop with a Nvidia card installed). Ah well maybe Olivia will work or it will give me an excuse to upgrade my hardware. The problem has been caused by Ubuntu as 12.10 crashes out in the same way but 12.04 works fine, haven't tried 13.04 yet.

JWJones wrote:I've tried it repeatedly, trying to find something to like about it. It just isn't happening for me. Is it just me, or does everything seem fuzzy, low-res, and chunky in Gnome 3 Shell? Everything is so dumbed-down, and things take too may steps to do. I was a big fan of Gnome 2, but I just can't grok with Gnome 3. For that matter, Cinnamon is starting to irritate me as well. I'm moving everything to Xfce, which is already the default for my Debian and Slackware boxes. Much faster and less resource-hungry than anything Gnome, Cinnamon, or Unity related, and KDE, for that matter.

Must be your hardware as it is crystal clear for me. Didn't like it until I found Axe menu. Installed it and love it.

Yes, and it's evolved into a very attractive and useful desktop environment all of a sudden! I played with it inside a VirtualBox guest Fedora installation. Subsequently, I tried 4 times to install Gnome3 on my Mint 15 Olivia system, and upon rebooting got the LM logo that never proceeded. I even waited several hours one time. So each time I had to go back to Mint 15 and reinstall and try again!

Yes, and it's evolved into a very attractive and useful desktop environment all of a sudden! I played with it inside a VirtualBox guest Fedora installation. Subsequently, I tried 4 times to install Gnome3 on my Mint 15 Olivia system, and upon rebooting got the LM logo that never proceeded. I even waited several hours one time. So each time I had to go back to Mint 15 and reinstall and try again!

I originally started with Linux Mint XFCE Nadia. I upgraded to Olivia and all was well. Well I got interested in trying Gnome 3, 3.8 to be exact. I added the PPA and installed. Works perfectly. No problems at all.I messed up one time and just logged into Xfce session and reinstalled the packages and was back in business.

There are 2 things I wish I could change:1) I am right-handed so it is a bit awkward to move the mouse to Top Left for the Activities. I would like an option to move it to Top Right.2) The Dash is fine, but I would also like to move it to the Left as well.

Other than those 2 slightly annoying things, Gnome 3.8 is coming along nicely.I don't believe that Clem would be too happy to see this happening since he and his team are dedicated to Cinnamon. But, be that as it may, Gnome is coming along.

When i originally tried Gnome3 i was so confused and almost started laughing. Now with the latest iteration and gnome tweak tool (should be supplied as standard) it is amazing because i can add minimise , places , and classic menu, which was all that was needed.

It is everything cinnamon is not,which really only boils down to one thing.. it is stable.

furthermore the huge icons are a bit of an odd choice for the menu but actually by mistake i forgot my TV was connected to my computer via hdmi and on booting ubuntu gnome it appeared on the screen (perfectly detected unlike cinnamon) and the massive icons really worked well perfect for a game / htpc interface and easily navigatable which cannot be said for any other DE.

Granted I use Debian Testing but I love the Gnome shell. It does take some getting used to admittedly but it is a different paradigm that I think has a great deal of potential. The only way it would be better I think is if customize it as easily as KDE.